


she's far away somewhere in her eiderdown

by TrekFaerie



Series: 000 [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Couch Sex, F/F, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Forbidden Love, Love Triangles, Slow Burn, Stone Butch, Vaginal Fingering, Vignette, Wings, fast burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-28 15:39:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19815310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrekFaerie/pseuds/TrekFaerie
Summary: Anathema gets two new next-door neighbors.Which would be nice, except she didn't have a next-door.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ♬ convoluted ways to get a bunch of girls to kiss ♬

There hadn’t been, the last she had checked, any other cottages for sale in Tadfield except for Jasmine Downs. There certainly hadn’t been two immediately next door to her, one on each side, where she was very certain that, when she had gone to bed the previous night, there had been a road and a pasture, respectively. All of that, combined with the townsfolk telling her that the cottages, which had always been there, had been purchased by two separate but clearly independently wealthy young ladies, made her realize that something was definitely, definitely up.

Seeing the “young ladies” only confirmed it. Only one of them, a girl with short hair and carefully done golden makeup, seemed to be an actually young lady; the other was a bit older, and had a silvery sort of mottling to her face that would have made humans assume she had some weird rosacea and actively try to avoid mentioning it. (Perhaps everyone was young in Taylor’s eyes?)

Of course, it didn’t matter at all what they _seemed_ to be, because Anathema immediately knew that neither were. If nothing else, their auras… It hurt her eyes to even try to look upon them, though for different reasons. The young woman’s aura shined like sunlight reflecting off pure, burnished gold; the older woman’s was like a dark room your eyes couldn’t adjust to, with silver flecks of dying stars. No _human_ aura could ever look like theirs did.

So, she made a call.

-

“An angel and a demon moved next door to me.”

There was a pause on the other ends of the line – twin pauses. _“… Together_?”

_“I wasn’t aware you had a ‘next door.’”_

“Well, I do now! Which is very annoying, because I had plans for that pasture.” She slumped against the table, keeping her phone in the crook of her neck. “And no, not together, obviously. Even you two don’t live together… Right?”

 _”I’m upstairs right now, actually,”_ Crowley said cheerfully.

 _”Which is also – pardon me, dear,”_ and though there was clearly a hand placed over the receiver, she could hear Aziraphale quite clearly, _”VERY ANNOYING, CROWLEY!”_

_"I’m not sharing a phone with you like a pair of gossipy old biddies!”_

“I’m sure this is a very important argument, but can we please get back to the comparatively little issue of _Heaven and Hell are stalking me_?!”

_”I can’t imagine why either side would have an interest in a human at this point, even a human witch.”_

_”Has been a whole two years. Who knows what plans they’ve cooked up since then?”_

“If they wanted to kill me—“

_”Oh, you’d be long dead, dear, don’t you worry about that.”_

_”There are things worse than death, of cour—Ow! Did you just… You can’t just reach through the damned phone and—“_

_”I wouldn’t worry about it too much for now, Anathema,”_ Aziraphale said pleasantly, speaking loudly over Crowley’s grumblings. _”Based on your descriptions… The particular angel and demon assigned to you are not well known for their subtlety. Whatever they’re planning, they’ll be sure to reveal it in good time. We’ll deal with it when the time comes.”_

_”Try not to die ‘til then.”_

Nothing they said was particularly comforting, but it was true. All she could do was wait for their plans to unfold themselves.

-

Despite having been come up with by two entirely different sets of beings, both Heaven and Hell’s plans, whatever they truly were, seemed to start in exactly the same way.

-

“Can… I borrow a…”

The older woman stood at her door, casting surreptitious glances at her wrist, which very visibly had some sort of slightly smudged writing on it.

“… Cup of… suitor?”

Anathema schooled her face into neutrality, as difficult as it was. “You… want to borrow a cup of sugar?”

The woman consulted her wrist, then smiled. Her teeth were just a bit too sharp in places where teeth weren’t meant to be in anything outside the order Lophiiformes. “Yes,” she said, surging with confidence, “I want to borrow a cup of sugar! Let me in your house.”

Which was definitely not something you should reply to by letting said person into your house, but, hey, you don’t learn anything new by being cowardly.

In the kitchen, she slowly measured out her large container of sugar into a mason jar while the woman sat across the island from her, somewhat awkwardly. “I see you’re new in town,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“It’s, uh.” She glanced down at her wrist again. “Dag.”

“… Dag.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it… short for something?” she asked, trying to be encouraging.

She glanced down at her wrist again, cringing. Whatever she was, she clearly wasn’t the demon of improv. “It’s short for. Dag.”

“Dag is short for. Dag.”

“… Yes.”

“Well.” She smiled, sealed the jar shut, and pushed it into her confused hands. “My name is Anathema. It’s short for Anathema.” 

-

An hour after “Dag” left, there was a short, firm rap of a knock at her door.

The young woman beamed at her, but the smile did not even begin to reach her eyes. “Good afternoon,” she said. “My name is Ariel Sefirot. I’m new in town. May I trouble you for a cup of sugar?”

Anathema leaned against the door frame, arms crossed. “Did… neither of you two think to buy groceries or anything?” she asked.

The smile faltered. “I... Pardon?”

“It’s just that, a little while ago, Dag – you know Dag, right? She’s a scream. Literally. – it’s just, she came by asking for a cup of sugar, too! Which I’m pretty sure isn’t a thing people do anymore, even out here. I mean, there are at least three Tesco’s within an hour of here.” 

She could see the sweat forming on “Ariel’s” brow, droplets golden in the sun. “I… I’m making a pudding,” she said, somewhat forcibly, as if desperately trying to force Anathema back on script.

“Really? What kind?”

If she had been like one of Anathema’s favorite childhood toys, “Ariel’s” head would have clean flew off her body. “… The pudding kind,” she said, with an entirely commendable amount of confidence for someone who looked very much like a deer in headlights.

“Sounds – hm, what’s that term… ‘Scrummy?’” She smiled, holding out a similar mason jar to the one she had given “Dag.” “Be sure to ask if you need anything else for your pudding-pudding, okay? Milk, eggs… And you’ll save me a slice, of course!”

“… Of co—“

Shutting the door in the face of an angel seemed very much like a power move, but she didn’t have much time to revel in it. After all, she had work to do.

-

A brief but informative Internet search later on that night left her much more prepared for the morning, where she exited her cottage to find them hard at work pretending to be busy: one tending an unseasonably bloom-filled rosebush, and the other gutting a fresh-caught stream fish. She stood in the middle of her yard; all eyes were already on her, so she didn’t need to do much to attract their attention. Still, she cleared her throat, and clasped her hands in front of her.

“Dagon. Uriel.” 

The very atmosphere seemed to change as she spoke their true names into the world. They froze at their pretend work, staring at her. Always good to have a captive audience when you want to make an important announcement!

“I don’t know why your respective employers sent you down here to keep an eye on me,” she began, “but until you find whatever it is you’re looking for, or do whatever it is you need to do… Well! There isn’t exactly anyone in this village that even just _looks_ less than three times my age, and even if they are very fun thirteen year old kids, having your only friends be thirteen year old kids is not exactly great.”

They stared at her.

“If you could find some time in your heavenly and demonic schedules… You know where I live. Come by at any time.”

They still stared at her, even as she turned and headed back into the cottage. They stared at her as she lingered in the doorway.

“Maybe we can use all that sugar to bake a cake.”

The door shut.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've decided to post all the interceding bits as their own little chapters for mainly attention and also aesthetics

“You need to make them good. Obviously.”

Adults very rarely went to thirteen-year-old boys for advice. Very few thirteen-year-old boys, however, were antichrists who had foiled a planned apocalypse through sheer force of will. In fact, there was only one; but, if there had been more, very few would have been so magnanimous to offer their advice for the low, low price of being pushed on a tire swing for the length of the conversation.

“Adam, what is that even supposed to mean?” she asked, giving a mild spin to the tire. “One of them is an _archangel_ ; she’s already as good as she can be. I can’t make her… gooder, or something.”

He pulled an exaggerated face of disgust. “Heaven isn’t ‘good.’ I’ve met them; you were there. They’re both the same: they’re _nice_.”

“Why are you saying that like being nice is a bad thing to be?”

“Because you can be a nice person without being a good person. Take angels, for instance. They’re always saying ‘be not afraid’ in the stories, but then the stories end up being about them tearing down cities for stupid reasons, or sending bears after kids; that’s what they think ‘good’ is. Your angel, she’s treating you nice and everything right now, but when it comes to it, she’s here to do something that will hurt the whole human race. It might be ‘good’ for Heaven, but I’m dead sure anything that’s good for them is bad for us. So, she’s not good. But, if you make her good, you can stop it. Same with the demon. Make her a good person.”

She sighed. _Making_ someone a “good person,” when they weren’t people to begin with… Getting a demon to dare disobey Hell’s orders, or getting someone so entrenched in the thinking of Heaven to spare humanity whatever fate they had in mind… “Is it even possible…”

“It has to be. Mr. A and Mr. C are good. If it were impossible, they wouldn’t have gone against them and helped me save the world, and we wouldn’t be here to talk about it being possible or not.”

“I don’t exactly have six thousand years of romantic tension to help that along, Adam. Who knows how much time the Earth has left?”

“It only took them so long ‘cause even though they’re both very good, they’re also very, very thick.” Adam grinned. “You’re clever. All us humans are, in comparison to them. I bet you could do it in half the time.

“That’s still three thousand years.”

He shrugged. “Then you’d better get started.”

“Any idea where I should start?”

“Not really.” He hummed, thinking. “Whatever it is grownups do with pretty girls, I reckon. You’d know more than me.”

He jumped off of the swing, and they started back into town together. “Adam,” she said, the thought suddenly coming to her, “did you think that demon with the big fly on her head… Do you consider her ‘nice,’ by what your definition of nice is?”

“She didn’t immediately murder me, even when I was annoying her,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “It seemed pretty nice at the time.”


	3. Chapter 3

Uriel’s first visits to her were tentative, nervous; she glanced around herself as she stepped over the threshold, like a schoolgirl worried about being caught out after curfew by the headmaster. She would be quiet, as well; she mostly just sat in whatever room Anathema was in, her hands folded in her lap, answering direct questions with non-answers when asked but otherwise not contributing to the conversation. It wasn’t the ideal sort of situation, but it was worlds better than just talking to herself, so she was fine with it.

As the weeks passed, and the visits continued without any sort of visible holy reckoning being foisted upon them, she seemed to relax a little bit. She was still much too formal, but her answers to questions about angels became less terse and opaque, even as personal questions remained a challenge.

“You know what I’ve been wondering about for the longest time?”

Uriel was busy going through Anathema’s back catalogue of magazines. Since she didn’t sleep, and Taylor was threatening to take her to court if she continued with the celestial harmonies at 3AM, she needed reading material to pass the nights. She especially liked the ones with articles about angel sightings; she often cut them out of the magazine, with Anathema’s express permission, and sent them via celestial means to Sandalphon, who apparently shared them with the rest of the office to great effect.

“Did you ever actually make that pudding?”

Uriel licked her finger to turn the pages; she wasn’t sure where she could have picked it up. Was it something angels did, or something Uriel did? She had yet to figure out where the line between the two was, exactly.

“I don’t actually know what it is,” she said. Just a brief flash of tongue between lips, a soft press to the tip of her finger. “Food isn’t exactly the aspect of human creation I’m most familiar with. I picked something I half-remembered off an old memo. That’s all it was.”

“Then what is?”

“Hm?”

Anathema drew her legs up onto the couch, turning to face Uriel. “The aspect of human creation you’re familiar with,” she said. “What is it?”

“Oh.” She glanced down at the magazine; when that didn’t feel far enough, she turned her head to glance at a wall. “Art. It’s art.”

“Do you… like art?”

“I appreciate the works dedicated to Her glory.”

“Yeah, but what do you _like_?”

She had really lovely eyes, she thought. Darkness framed in gold, like the corona of a solar eclipse.

“Big cows.”

“… What?”

“The last time I was on Earth…” She put a knuckle to her lip in thought. “I believe it was the 19th century. I was giving inspiration to a future saint for an apologia he was working on. In the houses of wealthy men… There were always portraits of the exceptionally large cows they had bred. Very serious paintings of very large cows.”

“And you liked them?”

“I thought it so strange that they would alter Her design so greatly, to change a living creature from what She had formed to something they preferred… And then specifically commission a portrait to celebrate it.” 

She laughed a little. “Humans are a little weird, huh?”

“They really are.” She was staring out the window, now, but, every so often, risked a glance in Anathema’s direction. “I never very much interacted with them for very long. Until this assignment.”

_Assignment_. That was a new admission. She cleared her throat, shifting in her seat, trying not to reveal her usual excitement at uncovering a new part of a mystery. “Well, all the humans you’ll meet around here are definitely weird, no questions about that,” she said. “But, I think you’ll find that’s not so much of a bad thing.”

A smile quirked at the corner of her lips. “Perhaps,” she said. 

“… So, you _didn’t_ make a pudding.”

“Angels don’t eat,” she said, in a way that made it sound like she thought that was the end of that, completely unaware of the gears that were already starting to turn in Anathema’s head…


	4. Chapter 4

She was very, very much unprepared for Dagon’s response.

In truth, for some reason, she had expected something a bit more like Uriel’s. Sure, angels and demons were very different creatures, and Dagon had started swanning into her house every chance she was invited in, and several times when she wasn’t, almost immediately after that first day, while Uriel had spent three solid days walking up to her postbox, stopping, and then walking all the way back to her cottage before she even knocked on the door, but… Everything she knew about how both sides operated told her that they generally dealt with humans on a sort of “don’t feed the animals” sort of basis. It was why both of them had been so coy about initially surveiling her.

Which didn’t jive at all with the hand in her bra.

They were watching a movie together. It was a horror movie, perfect for a rainy night in, something with mad scientists and monsters and gore that looked just a bit too unreal to be truly gruesome. Dagon had been lightly chuckling the entire time, as if it was a comedy, with Anathema tucked against her side. Her hand had started at rubbing her shoulders, moving down and down over her body until she was groping at her firm breast under the cup of her bra, pinching and tweaking the nipple to hardness. Anathema shifted under the attention, feeling the familiar warmth of arousal pool deep inside her.

Dagon’s hand traced further down her body, resting at her hip for a short while before slipping under her skirt, under the cotton of her underwear, and making lazy circles with her finger in the dark bush of her pubic hair.

“Buy a girl dinner first, why don’t you?” But, it just made Dagon laugh more, and Anathema grinned as well, turning up her head slightly to leave a bite on the curve of her jawline.

She idly realized that the movie had ended, the short tune of the DVD main menu repeating over and over again, but Anathema couldn’t find it in herself to care: she was pressed face-down onto the couch, Dagon fully clothed and slotted firmly against her back; her skirt had long since been tossed to the wayside, her panties around her knees as two long fingers expertly curled inside her. “You moan so pretty,” she whispered into her ear, voice rough and low. “Never heard anything like it before.”

“You… Oh.” She could feel her pleasure beginning to crest; she squeezed her thighs together tight, desperate for more friction against her clit. “You could keep hearing it – oh, yes, right there!”

They ended up laying on the couch together, facing each other, Anathema holding Dagon’s hand up to her mouth, lapping up every drop of her own slickness. “Here,” she said. She leaned up, pressing their lips together, her tongue tracing the pale bow of her lip before dipping inside. She tasted salty, savory, like squid ink pasta.

When she pulled back, Dagon was staring at her, jaw slack slightly, thin brows narrowed.

“Is something… wrong?”

“No, no… It’s just. Never done that before.”

She couldn’t help the snort. “I’m sorry, but are you really expecting me to believe you’re a virgin? Because I’ve had sex with virgins before, and it is _not_ \--“

“No, I mean… The mouth stuff.”

“… Kissing?”

“Yeah, that.”

“You… Never kissed anyone before?”

“Not really something we do, Down There.”

“Wow.” While she generally didn’t put much credence in such societal mores, there was definitely something a little… _something_ , about being the first of something for a being that was literally thousands of years older than you. “… Would you… like to kiss more?”

“… Yes.”

-

There was a chance that Anathema could have found a single, snowy feather in the drying mud of her garden that morning, but it turned to ash in the morning sun.


	5. Chapter 5

The first time she saw Uriel in anything but business professional attire in muted colors was something like a shock to the system. On anyone else, the dress she had decided to wear on the picnic would have looked strange, maybe even comical. But, Uriel had always had an awesome sort of presence, in the original sense of the term; she _looked_ like someone who had commanded celestial armies in heavenly warfare, like someone who had appeared to ancient peoples and inspired them to create masterpieces of paint and marble and glasses stained with color. In that way, she looked stunning, even in a dress decorated, for some reason, with a Monet watercolor.

“You look…” It was like everything had been pushed from her chest – her breath, her words – to make room for the fluttering sort of tightness they’d been filled with. “It’s just…”

“Is it that awful?” she asked, with a smile that could have been teasing, if it wasn’t just a bit too fragile.

“… It suits you. Completely.”

Tadfield had an overabundance of charming places to have a picnic, and they found a wonderful shady spot overlooking a field of wildflowers to spread their blanket out on. The basket itself had ended up being too heavy for Anathema to carry without ruining everything in it; Uriel had carried it out instead, with an ease that had made Anathema’s heart thrill a little.

“I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave anything out,” she said, pulling out fruits and sandwiches and pickles and tiny little cakes. “If it’s going to be your first time eating, you need to try out the full range of food types humanity has to offer, to see what you like best.”

“Gabriel says food is revolting,” she said, almost absently. “He says it pollutes the temples of our celestial bodies.”

“Oh, that guy is such an ass.” Uriel’s suddenly stricken expression made her cringe. “I… kind of met him, a little, at the whole ‘end of the world’ thing. He crouched down to talk to the demon, even though she was _clearly_ just as important as he was. It left a bad taste in my mouth.”

“… I suppose he does do that, sometimes.” Her expression was fond, though. “He is a very good angel, you know. I’ve known him since the Beginning. He’s always brought… stability, to everything. Even when there was chaos or turmoil, he always saw us through. He keeps us safe.”

“You sound close.”

“All us archangels are. It’s… a bit like what you humans call a ‘family,’ I think. We’ve worked together for so long…”

“… I’m sorry. For calling him an ass.”

“… He is a bit of an ass, though.” She laughed slightly, behind her hand. “One time, he told Michael that her hairstyle went against doctrine. She nearly smited him right then and there, for that.”

Anathema laughed too, though she had absolutely no idea what any of that meant. “Well! Temple-polluting time! What would you like to start with?”

She cocked her head to the side, observing the spread. “… Every principality I’ve ever met has had a fondness for sweets,” she said. “I suppose I’d like to try those first.”

“Okay, you’re going to laugh at me, but… This old woman in town, she makes the most _amazing_ little angel food cakes—“

“’Angel food?’”

“I know, I know! I think humans have this weird idea that, if angels do eat, they’d eat foods that were like clouds? Anyway, they’re really good, and I asked her to make one for you…” 

She pulled back the plastic top of the container, revealing the cake. It was light and fluffy-looking, with a small amount of seasonal berries on top. She placed it on Uriel’s lap. Uriel, holding her fork like you would a tiny javelin, sliced out a section, pierced it, and brought it to her lips. There, she paused, until an encouraging smile from Anathema gave her the nerve to actually put it in her mouth.

“… You have to chew it, too. I’m sorry; I should have explained that a lot earlier. Yeah, good, and then… swallow, yes, perfect.”

She licked her lips. Anathema leaned forward. “So?” she asked. “What’s the judgment of the first archangel to ever eat an angel food cake?”

“I have to admit… If we _did_ eat food, it would definitely taste a bit like this.”

“Does that mean you like it?”

“I’m… still not entirely sure how to answer that question,” she said, somewhat wistfully.

“Well. We’ll figure it out eventually, won’t we?” Anathema gave her a brief pat on the hand, feeling her flesh tense like a small animal at the contact. She then returned to rummaging through the basket. “Now, these olives are from a tree my mother planted the day I was born…”


	6. Chapter 6

Tadfield was an idyllic village, but Anathema was American: she locked her damn door when she left her house. So, when she returned from a morning jog to find her door cracked open, she assumed the worst. She picked up the biggest stone she could find in the garden and entered.

Instead of a prowler or a serial killer, like she had expected, it was Dagon, sitting on the floor of her living room, surrounded by…

“Did…” She took a step back, still holding the stone. “Did you go through all my papers?”

Dagon looked at her with an expression that was probably very innocent-looking for a demon, but definitely still heavily implied that something was up. “They were very unorganized,” she said, straightening out one stack. “I’ve set up a system for you. There’s a key around here, somewhere; you’ll never find anything without it.”

“That’s so… Why are you even in my house? I locked my door.”

“I’m a demon. I just told the lock it better reconsider its life choices, and it let me in. Now,” she said, “I’ve managed to put the UFO sightings into subcategories based on location and date, but I think—“

“Dagon…”

“—it could be further organized by size and headcount—“

“Dagon, just tell me what Hell wants.”

She fell silent. Her fingers moved over the stack of newspaper articles on Mole Men, nervously skittering about like spiders. Anathema stepped around the stacks gingerly, until she managed to find a clear spot right next to Dagon. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been in my house while I’m gone, is it?” she asked. “This is just the first time I’ve actually caught you.”

“I… How did you know?”

“I’ve been leaving lines of salt at the doors and windows,” she said, softly. “Every time I’ve left the house. One or the other is usually disturbed when I get back.”

“… I have to admit,” she said, not making any eye contact. “… watching that snobby angel try to stuff herself and her ridiculous wings through the top window is _very_ funny.”

“It does. Care to admit anything else, though?”

Her lips drew tight and thin, and Anathema sighed. “You two… Whatever it is you’re looking for, you don’t want me to be here when you find it.”

She sniffed. “Why would that be a problem?” she asked, somewhat archly. “I’m not afraid of you or anything.”

“You’re afraid of something.”

“I’m a demon. I’m not afraid of—“ She stopped herself. “… That angel. She’s probably afraid. Cowards, angels are. All of ‘em.”

“Are they?” she murmured softly. She leaned her head against Dagon’s shoulder, embracing her arm. “And what is ‘that angel’ afraid of?”

“… Getting you involved. Probably.”

“I’m already involved,” she said. “It’s about me somehow, isn’t it? Why else would you have been put here, next to me?”

“It doesn’t have to be, not really. If I—That angel, she probably thinks that if she can manage it without you knowing…”

Anathema looked up at her with a rueful smile. “I’ve known too much my entire life,” she said. “What’s one more forbidden truth?”

Dagon kissed her. She put her hand against her cheek and brought her close, claiming her lips. It had been the first time she had ever done it on her own, and the pleasant surprise of it was enough for Anathema to give her another reprieve. 

She would learn the truth, eventually. When both of them were ready to tell her, she would learn.


	7. Chapter 7

He first began to notice an angelic presence early on in the day, when he had left the shop unattended to go enjoy a lovely “me-date” brunch at a nearby boutique hotel. The presence lingered, just always out of the corner of his vision – and perhaps reality itself – as he went about doing a bit of shopping before returning to the shop. He placed his lunch on his desk, turned to face the general vicinity of the presence, and firmly placed his hands on his hips.

“If you don’t reveal yourself to me immediately,” he said, in what he hoped was a very commanding voice, “I shall be forced to drag you out myself. And you will not like it one bit.”

Uriel stepped onto the plane of existence. She was… different than he remembered her, for some reason. Of course, he mainly remembered her in the role of “helping cause pain to his physical form.” He didn’t remember her ever wearing jeans, really. Jeans weren’t really something Heaven went for. Too tight around certain parts, probably.

“I mean no harm,” she said, her voice low and careful. She glanced around them, as if _she_ was the one who had to be concerned about being watched. The cheek.

“Oh, is that what you told the Egyptians, as you went by? ‘Nothing to see here, carry on about your day, don’t wonder about why your neighbors painted the door with dead lambs or anything!’”

Her jaw tightened slightly. “I… This is very difficult for me, you know.”

“You know what was actually quite difficult? Getting the wrinkles out of my lapels, after you manhandled me against that wall. Remember that? I very much remember that!”

“Aziraphale—“

“Why, when my ‘boyfriend in the dark glasses,’ as you so creatively called him, ropes me into one of his little bouts of ‘sleeping,’ I can sometimes remember that three times a night!”

“Aziraphale—“

“So, you can see why I don’t give a, give a single _fig_ about whatever it is you’ve got your little golden scales up in a dander about, so why don’t you just go take whatever nonsense you were going to bother me with up to your little friends in Heaven—“

“Aziraphale, I’m scared!”

She was trembling. She stood stock still, hands bunched into fists at her sides, but she trembled like a leaf in the wind. Her whole form trembled like earth before a quake, as if she would break apart from the sheer force of it.

“… Good Lord.” How was he meant to respond to that? “You are, aren’t you? You really, truly are. _Terrified_.”

“I have… been compromised,” she said, her voice cracking. “By the human I was meant to be observing.”

“Human…” He could feel the last stick in his beaver dam of resentment snap and wash away. “Oh, dear. You’ve gone and fallen in love Anathema, haven’t you?”

“It can’t! It can’t be that! I can’t be _in_ love with a human!” She brought her shaking hands to her face, digging her fingers into her cheeks. “I mustn’t, I can’t, I just can’t—“

“Now, now. None of that.” He took her by the wrists and forced her hands from her face; golden light shined through where she had dug too far into the skin. “You are being a _very_ silly angel right now. It’s not as bad as all that.”

“If they learn what’s in my heart, I will Fall. And I should.”

“That’s…” He was very much not prepared, emotionally or physically, for this sort of situation. Where was Crowley, when you needed him? He’d have something clever to say, to break the tension, allay the fear that seemed to burn her like hellfire. “Why would you think that?”

“It’s not something an angel does,” she said. “We are meant to love God’s creations. We aren’t meant to… to want to kiss them, or hold them. It’s not right. It’s not proper.”

“I have quite a few opinions about the proper behavior of angels myself, you know,” he said loftily. “Namely, I’ve come to think that the vast majority of those behaviors are rubbish, and should be discarded as such. And regarding this being something ‘angels don’t do’ – my dear girl, you remember the business with the Nephilim as well as I do. It may not be something angels are meant to do, but it’s certainly something they _do_.”

“The angels that lay with the daughters of Men were cast out for their sins.”

“… For some reason, I very much doubt that will be a specific issue in this situation.” He frowned. “Have you even kissed the girl yet? Do you really think the Lord’s righteous fury will come down upon you if you so much as give her a kiss under milky twilight?”

Her miserable expression told him that, yes, she thought exactly that, if not in so many words.

He led her over and sat her down at his desk. The box containing his “lunch,” which was, in reality, a rhubarb crumble, was opened and placed in front of her, the plastic fork wordlessly pushed into her hand. She was, apparently, familiar enough with the concept of “breaking bread” to start taking polite bites of crust.

“I believe you’re going about this the wrong way,” he said, finding himself another chair from further in the shop and bringing it there. “Despite your… earthbound dalliances, you’re still thinking in heavenly terms. You think of everything as eternal, because everything you are _is_ eternal. Humans, however… Their lives are so very, very short. Shorter than you can even comprehend. Like flames: beautiful, warm, and gone at the slightest breath. And Anathema, as connected to the realm of the fantastic as she is, is no different. In time, she shall die.”

There were little tears, like drops of silver, at the corner of her eyes. “Why are you telling me that?”

“Well… I’m merely saying, it’s very much a matter of time, isn’t it? Head Office didn’t give your little mission a deadline, correct?” She nodded slowly. “Then, perhaps it shall take a bit longer than you expected. Say, with good, clean living… Eighty years? I’ve spent longer trying to find the best wild marjoram in Greece.”

“I should… be like you, then?”

“No one is quite like me, dear.” He smirked, just a little. “You just need to come up with your own little… arrangement. It’s not as dire as it seems.”


	8. Chapter 8

The vast majority of demons didn’t understand technology. Dagon, however, was different; she had long been attuned to the various ways humans communicated with each other, having used them all quite effectively to send messages to Hell’s agents on Earth. So, when Crowley saw a silvery sludge oozing its way out of his landline that afternoon, even if he hadn’t known about Anathema’s predicament, he already knew who was going to form.

“That’s the spot I killed poor old Ligur, you know,” he said, not even turning away from his game of Candy Crush. He had invented microtranscations, which always seemed to come back and bite him in the ass on really hard levels. “Mind you don’t end up the same way.”

Dagon cracked her neck and winced. “I’m not here to fight you,” she said. “I’ve got a problem.”

“Wonderful.”

“I don’t want to hurt my human.”

He paused his game, swinging around his chair to look up at her from his slumped position. “… Well, that does sound like quite the problem,” he said, “considering you’re not meant to even _have_ a human. What do you even think that means, honestly? Is she your slave?”

“No! She’s… She’s beautiful.”

“Huh." How boring. Not even worth pausing. He went back to the game. "Don’t see why lust would be a problem with Down There. It’s highly encouraged.”

“It’s not… It _was_ , I think, at first? I thought fucking her would get me what I wanted, but instead it just… made me look at her eyes a whole lot. They’re very pretty eyes. I don’t even wanna eat them or anything.”

“Ah. You ‘caught feelings,’ as the kids say nowadays.”

Dagon looks stricken. “Are… Are those contagious? I didn’t know they were contagious…”

“It’s an expression, you daft fish. It means you’ve gone and fallen for the human!" He grinned. It was half at how amusing the whole situation was, and half because the little candy person had just informed him that he'd gotten three whole stars on an impossibly difficult level. "And not in the nice, proper demonic sense of Falling, either; you’ve let yourself get a whole bunch of squishy little emotions over her, to the point where you’re thinking of going against Hell’s orders for her. What a scandal.”

“It’s just… What they want me to do, I’d need to… I just don’t want to hurt Anathema—“

Plastic and rare metals clinked to the floor, falling from Crowley’s clenched fist like expensive, blackened snowflakes.

“It’s. Anathema?” His words came out in a choked squeak. “You’re… in love with Anathema? _Our_ Anathema?”

Dagon visibly bristled, showing her teeth. “Since when is she _your_ Anathema?” 

“Not _mine_! _Ours_! And roughly at the same time Aziraphale and I decided we were going to adopt the whole of Tadfield like a litter of Pomeranians. _Anathema_?”

“I want to know how you managed to get away with so much over the centuries,” she said. “I want to know how you spent centuries on Earth while going against Hell’s wishes. I want to know so I can do it, too.”

“Honestly? I got away with it so often and for so long because you’re _very_ shit at your job. So, unless whatever useless imp they dragged into your office is the next Girl Friday, you shouldn’t have any trouble at al—“

The punch took him by surprise; the chair tipped and he hit the floor hard, getting a good faceful of hard little plastic bits.

“Insult my filing skills again, Crawly,” she hissed, fire in her eyes. “Do it one more fucking time.”

“In what bloody nightmare world do you think people suddenly become more willing to help you after you _punch them in the damned face_?!”

“A lot of help you are! Not everyone is… _immune_ to holy water or something, you know! If Hell finds out I’m shirking my duties to play house with a mortal, I’ll…” She inhaled sharply, letting it out slow. “I don’t want to think of what they’ll do to me. I’m not like you, Crowley; I’m a good demon. I’ve never gone against anything. Never been punished. Not even once. You don’t become a lord of Hell by disobeying orders from your superiors.”

“You could always just… fail, you know.”

She blinked with the membrane she had instead of a proper functioning eyelid. “What do you mean?”

“Well… I shouldn’t help you, really, ‘cause of the whole ‘you punched me in the face’ matter…”

“I could punch you again. Would that help.”

“… But, if it gets you out of my damn flat and my damn life any sooner – just. Don’t. Don’t succeed at whatever Hell wants you to do to her. Don’t do whatever it is that will hurt her. Do what you can to protect her and make her happy. Keep her safe and apart from them.”

Dagon bit her lip. “Do you… Do you really think that would work?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Always worked for me.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not really excited and posting everything in one night you are

She opened the door to find Uriel and Dagon standing there. Which was definitely strange, because she was outside of her house, carrying a bag of groceries, while they were standing inside of her house, looking like they’d both been knocked out of an MMA fight in the ninth round.

Honestly, there was so much, she wasn’t sure where to start.

Uriel stopped the bag before it hit the ground, a lazy little miracle with a click of her fingers. “I’ll put these away,” she said softly, hefting up the bag and turning into the kitchen, as if her forehead weren’t sliced clean open, as if golden ichor wasn’t slowly running from her brow and onto her face.

Dagon wiped black blood dripping from a busted nose onto her sleeve, which happened to belong to the same arm she put around Anathema’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get you inside,” she said, and as she spoke, it was very clear she was missing more than a few teeth.

The living room was clearly ground zero, everything messy and broken around them, but Dagon easily flipped the couch right-side up again and corralled Anathema onto it. She paced in silence until Uriel entered the room again, carrying a cup of tea on a saucer, placing it in Anathema’s hands. Then, they stood together in front of her, and Anathema’s frizzled brain had the presence of mind to realize they had never, ever done that before; she wasn’t even sure they had ever been in the same room together. And yet, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, a stalwart front.

She sipped the tea. Cream and five sugars. Exactly how she always made it.

“… Are… Are you two okay?” she asked, for lack of anything better to say. “Should I… call an ambulance or something? A magic ambulance?”

“We’re already healing,” Uriel said.

“We looked a lot worse ten minutes ago.”

“Worse?!” She looked for somewhere to put the cup down. Uriel immediately flipped a table back onto its legs. “I just… Is this because of me? Did you hurt each other over me?”

They glanced between themselves for a moment. “… I,” said Dagon, clearly choosing her words very carefully, “had seen Uriel breaking the lock to your door and going inside. Since neither of us had done that in a while, I thought she was making her move, and I tried to stop her.”

“I,” said Uriel, just as carefully, “was entering your home to place anti-demonic sigils—“

“Because you were jealous.”

“Because I was—“ Uriel stumbled on her words, looking at Dagon with such fury that Anathema briefly worried they’d start it up again – with her in the middle. “Because I was sure Dagon was getting ready to make her move, and I intended to thwart her.”

“We confronted each other in the living room, and…” Dagon pushed her septum back into place with her thumb. “Well, you know. Doing as angels and demons do.”

“We were eventually able to properly communicate—“

“Miss Smite-y over here started going all Old Testament with a _very_ soppy monologue—“

“—and we realized that… though we are on opposite sides of the greatest war… On Earth, our allegiances are the same.”

“… To me?” They nodded. Anathema whistled out a breath. “Wow. That’s. Wow.”

“Uriel’s got this mad, brilliant little plan,” Dagon said, actually _grinning_ at the angel as she spoke. “She thinks life can go on as it is, with us looking and never actually finding it, for as long as it needs to be.”

“For as long as _you_ will be,” Uriel said.

“What are you even looking for?” she asked. “All this time, I’ve been trying to figure it out… If it’s something I can give you, I’ll give it. You can trust me.”

Uriel sighed, bowing her head. “Heaven… heard rumor of a second book of prophecy by your ancestor. I was sent to procure it, through any means necessary, as Heaven believes it contains vital information for the Third Coming. Not only would acquiring the book have the potential to bring you harm, as you would never give it up willingly, but the world coming to an end certainly would.”

“Hell thinks the exact same,” Dagon said. “Though, Hastur said I ought to just knock you on the head and run off with it…”

She trailed off, frowning. “… Anathema?”

“I… I…” She laughed so hard that she stopped actually making noise, just silent little convulsions. There was suddenly a weight on either side of her, and when she opened her eyes again, she could see them looking at her, concerned, through the well of tears. “I burned it! Christ, I burned that thing the day after I got it! You… You both have been going crazy over something that doesn’t even exist!”

It didn’t seem to dawn on them fully, at first. “You… burned it?” Uriel asked.

“Why would anyone burn something that tells the future?” Dagon asked. “Everyone wants to know what’s in the future.”

“I did it because I don’t! I don’t care what Agnes saw, or what she wanted my life to be! I want to experience life as it happens, not cataloging it for later analysis.” She tried to breathe around the giggles, but it was hard. “Though, to be honest… If I’d known that book would say something like ‘keep an eye out, Anathema: an angel and a demon are going to risk it all for you, and they are going to be so, so hot,’ I probably would’ve, I don’t know… browsed it a little before I burned it.”

“She thinks we’re hot,” Dagon whispered across Anathema’s head with a sly little grin.

Uriel, slow and cautious, brought a hand up to cup Anathema’s face. Her wound had shut and her blood had dried, making her look as if she had a golden diadem around her head. “I think I would risk it,” she said softly. “Everything.”

Anathema didn’t have the heart to tell her it was just an expression. She didn’t have to, though; Uriel pressed forward, taking Anathema’s lips in a kiss, all inexperience and nerves and hunger, raw hunger, and Anathema brought her fingers up to nest in Uriel’s short hair, her nails digging into her scalp, bringing her closer. A warm body pressed up against her back, wrapping arms around her middle and putting a head on her shoulder.

There was a noise like a cloth unfolding, and she noticed the lighting had changed. She broke the kiss, opening her eyes to find herself cocooned in a pair of wings: one white, soft, with golden streaks and accents; the other black, leathery, with smatterings of silvery fish scales. She threw herself back into the kiss, the embrace, and let herself be held there, safe and secure.


	10. Chapter 10

Anathema had purchased her bed frame, quite specifically, for two people. It was only now, with one more person that she had ever thought she’d have in her life, that she regretted not going for something a bit bigger.

She was in the middle, a little spoon boxed in on each side by two bigger spoons, watching as they reached over her body to explore each other’s. It had taken a few times for either of them to become comfortable with even touching each other; when their hands had crossed each other’s paths before, they had startled like horses, retreating and mainly focusing on their respective halves of Anathema’s body, divvying her up like a sexual judgment of Solomon. Now, though, they linked their fingers together above her pelvis, Dagon rubbing small circles between her knuckles.

There were things they were meant to be doing, other than just laying around. The stew Anathema had planned for dinner required hours of prep work, giving her a smaller and smaller window of opportunity with each passing minute she spent between them. Uriel was meant to be meeting Brian at his home, to help him memorize haftarah; her accent had impressed his parents, and they were beginning to get a little desperate. Dagon, meanwhile, had a report to send to Hell about her continued efforts to procure Agnes Nutter’s second book of prophecy, which she was definitely trying very hard to do.

And yet, none of them stirred.

Anathema drew a finger between Uriel’s thighs, to where the thick thatch of hair was matted with wetness, making her sigh and cant her hips forward. The metal of the bedframe creaked slightly with the movement, and she could feel Dagon’s smile against her hair.

“Are you really trying to start up another round?” she asked. “I thought humans were supposed to get tired.”

“Humans have a vast potential for energy,” Uriel said, her voice cracking halfway through on a breathy moan as Anathema slipped two fingers easily into her, “when sufficiently inspired.”

“And this human is very inspired.” She tilted her head back, allowing Dagon to trace sharpened teeth across the delicate skin of her neck. “Very, _very_ inspired.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \o/


End file.
